Blog TARDIS: August 2006

The Blog-TARDIS whirrs and graunches... blue lights flash... the wind machine starts up... cheap effects twinkle and fade... and we've arrived.

Timestamp: August 2006. It's a typical slack evening in the House Of Jaysmiths in Queen Street, Littlehampton. We've lived in Littlehampton for four and a half years, with a little acting, a lot of singing, Sarah's various full-time and part-time jobs, and - the most important aspect in financial terms - my job at The Creative Assembly, which I left in January. And when I stop working, I stop working. I've got a few excuses: I still haven't really figured out how to cope with my father dying, I work overly hard while I am working, and as of that February I started producing and rehearsing a musical. A sad, exhausted, busy little panda.(1)

Time has ticked on since the end of January and our bank balance has ticked down. Sarah's part-time XML data entry job isn't quite paying all the bills, and my brief fling with temporary work has singularly failed to produce regular hours, let alone enough cash to feather our nest. Even the faintest hint of downiness in the nest would have been nice. But no. It's time I admitted it; I'm bored, and that's because I'm a brainy bird, and that means it's time for me to get a new job in computing.

This process always amuses me, bigheaded swine that I am, and as Sarah hasn't seen it happen before, I casually explain what will happen. I update my CV, I tell her, and then I post it on a couple of industry websites. And the job agents will come knocking at my door within minutes. This tale is told at nine in the evening. My CV is posted at ten o'clock. At midnight I look unaccountably depressed. "What's wrong?" she asks. I explain that I have received no job offers. "It's midnight!" she points out. I nod sagely, accepting her reasoning. "And anyway," she adds, "I'm really not sure you should get your hopes up about this. If no-one emails you tomorrow, then don't feel bad."

The next morning I get three interview offers and direct contact from an agent. Sarah's face is a picture. I've done this before, and I know, whether it's wholly because I'm a superstar or simply because agents have nothing to do in the mornings, that this is what happens whenever I post my CV on the Computer Futures board. I'm reasonably sure it's not just them, though: I'm qualified and experienced, and my CV is pleasantly short and powerful. Long CVs are pointless. If you use long sentences, you're padding. If you go into detail about what you did one day on a month-long work placement, you're padding. Face it, if you're that good, you probably just need to put your name, and they'll hire you. Half long and twice strong, kids.

Now, being offered three interviews in the space of an hour is a very nice ego-boost. But having an agent take a direct interest in you, and tell you that he wants to represent you exclusively, and that he doesn't have a specific job for you right away but that he'll have several prospects very soon, is an even bigger boost. It sounds like flim-flam, doesn't it? But if you analyse it from a really cynical, I-am-a-job-agent-and-my-success-is-everything point of view, agents don't have time to flim-flam you. They get paid the lion's share of their income for finding you a job - and for you sticking at it, often for a minimum of three months. If they don't find you the right job, you'll be unhappy and might walk out. If they don't find you a job at all, they won't get paid. So, if you get an even remotely-experienced agent contacting you, this will be because he smells the biggest fish of all - a candidate whom he can try to place at his toughest corporate clients, who may well impress them, and who'll earn a sizeable percentage for him.

Don't get me wrong - particularly not if you're James, the agent in question - I'm not dissing the agent system, and I'm specifically describing the most cynical approach of all, one which doesn't even take into account any twinge of humanity on the part of the agent. The best agents are real human beings too. I'm not denying that the worst agents are pretty scummy, but they're the ones who will ring up with any old job offer and you'll know immediately that they didn't bother reading your CV because they'll give you the job you saw on their website saying "UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO PROGRAM IN JAVA! IN PORTSMOUTH! £AMAZING! ONLY CALIBRE PEOPLE NEED APPLY!" I could elaborate on the number of things wrong in this approach... but I should really get back to the plot. Suffice to say, the agents who tried that out on me got nowhere, whereas James from Day One Recruitment got me not one but two jobs.
And so back to the present tense (while still in the past). James the agent does indeed, as I've just spoiled above, get me two heavyweight interviews. One is with a company called Rocksteady, in North London. And the other is with a Vancouver firm called Radical Entertainment, who, apparently short of local candidates, are now marauding into Europe to look for team members. Quite why I say "Yes" to an initial interview with them in London, I'm not sure. Perhaps to surprise Sarah, who has been hoping I'll go to America with her for eight years now, and has endured that amount of time in the dingy confines of England to be with me in the interim. Perhaps to surprise myself, because I feel like I'm in a bit of a rut in Littlehampton. Perhaps because I've actually heard of Radical and have actively liked some of their games.

The interview is scheduled for early August. I go.

... to be continued...



(1) I read a book on the flight in which the narrator remarks that fathers have to die to make the world real for their sons. If you're in a position to disagree with this, I envy you...